One of the strongest wiregates around: The Thor

DMM had a hole to fill; they had just retired a wiregate carabiner from their line and needed something new to take it’s place. They wanted to create something “special.” So they made one of the strongest wiregates around. Chris Rowlands, from DMM, tells the story of how the Thor came to be.

Watch the video above or check it out on Vimeo or Youtube. Or subscribe to our Vimeo and YouTube channels to see more videos.

I don’t want to spoil the story, so instead I’ll tell you the interesting specs. The Thor carabiner is the strongest gate-open ‘biner on the market, at 11kN. This is important when accounting for the unlikely but dangerous situation of gate flutter and gate shutter, when the gate of the carabiner may open for a split second and when that moment corresponds to exact timing of a fall.

The Thor is tied (with the Metolius Inferno) for the highest closed gate major access strength for a wiregate carabiner at 28kN. Interestingly, it’s also stronger than many screwgate locking carabiners (even some of DMM’s screwgates). Overall, it’s the strongest and likely the most durable full-size wiregate carabiner on the market.

DMM achieved such a high open-gate strength by adding more metal to the spine of the carabiner. The angles on the top and bottom of the carabiner transfer the most weight possible to the thick spine. In addition, they added extra metal to the rope radius of the carabiner to help ensure kindness to your rope and ensure longevity of the carabiner.

This is one of the few straight-back carabiners that DMM makes. DMM believes that the bent-back design enables superior handling, but they also know that a bent-back makes it difficult to achieve the massive strengths they were looking to get out of the Thor. That’s why this super strong carabiner has the traditional straight back.

Like most of DMM’s carabiners, the Thor has ridges on the spine to increase grip and handling (Chris called these “Grippy Grips” in the DMM Alpha Light video, which I’m still hoping is the technical term). These grips also take out a tiny bit of weight, but not enough to reduce strength. The Thor also has a wide gate opening at 27mm, and comes in at 36 grams which lands it within the middle of the weight range of wire-gates (normal full-size wiregates range from 29 grams to 49 grams).

The Thor features a shrouded nose. Aside from a full-blown keylock, the shrouded nose is one of my favorite wiregate features. The main intention is to help avoid accidental opening, as when the carabiner slides across rock. Although not advertised as such, my experience is that a shrouded nose helps a lot to reduce snagging of the nose when clipping or unclipping. To add a keylock nose to this ‘biner, it likely would have upped the price about $5 for the consumer as the manufacturing process required to make the keylock is significantly more complicated.

The Thor is available as an individual carabiner or as a quickdraw. The quickdraws come on 11mm wide dyneema (a bit less floppy and more durable than the 8mm) in 12cm, 18cm, and 25cm lengths.

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Alison Dennis

Alison runs WeighMyRack from her 17' travel trailer. She is currently touring the US and would love if you contacted her to meet up to talk about climbing, climbing gear, or if you have any fun and/or ridiculous adventure in mind.

To me, the biggest benefit of the Thor comes from the 11kN open-gate strength which is definitely a worthy improvement. I imagine the 28kN closed gate strength was more a by-product of the open-gate strength increases and perhaps a fun number to toss around but in practice not that helpful taken by itself, as you stated.